The sanctuary that Malorie, the protagonist of the story, has enjoyed at the Jane Tucker School for the Blind for herself and her kids is about to prove the adage that nothing lasts forever. The inexplicable madness which turned the whole world upside down was supposed to be protected here because the inability to see is the only defense. And yet, the madness has managed to penetrate into what was seemingly the most protected sanctuary of all. One person is all that was required to bring it all down and that one person was Annette, who is blind. Soon it is a madhouse and the only way to deal with a madhouse is to escape. And so, Malorie, Olympia and Tom, once again uproot themselves looking for sanctuary elsewhere. As well as an explanation for how something that could not have happened managed to happen.
The new sanctuary is the old Camp Yadin. The one-summer camp has been closed down and shut off from the outside world the decade since the madness at the school. It is isolated from even its closest neighbor and the trio have been able to call it a home for longer than anywhere else since they’ve been together. Barely old enough to enter school when they arrived, the kids are now teenagers and the only world they’ve ever known is one where their mother moved well past cautious years ago and now lives permanently in a state of elevated paranoia. Even after a decade of relative safety and peace from the madness beyond the camp, Malorie lives each moment knowing it could be the last such moment of peace and safety.
Such as the absurdly unexpected moment that a stranger arrives at the camp claiming to be a census worker. Her steadfast resistance to answering any of his questions brings on the tension and anxiety that is basically the only mode he thinks his mother is capable of operating within. The census taker makes strange claims about a train operating and the capture of one the creatures bringing the madness. He also talks of hearing stories about people who tried to look at them as well as those who have managed to build back a life almost approaching normality. He also has lists. With names of survivors. Malorie never responds to him, and he finally goes away, but only after leaving one of these lists behind. And on this list of others who have supposedly survived the apocalyptic blinding of the world as it used to be are two names that her children have heard their Malorie mention often.
Not just names, in fact, but a place. And not a place that two teenagers in such a darkened world randomly come across. The place St. Ignace and it is located on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and that place is where their mother is from. Malorie learns from the insistent and curious kids that the two names are their grandparents, Sam and Mary Walsh, Malorie’s mother and father. They are not the names she was expecting to hear. It was shortly after the madness began that all contact had been lost with her parents and, naturally, she instantly moved to accept the worst-case scenario. That was seventeen years ago and the very idea that they might still be alive is so unlikely as to seem more like a cruel trick than anything capable of giving hope. But hope is thing you live on when there is nothing else. And so, one more time, she and the kids set out upon the dangerous trek into the unknown seeking not just sanctuary, but a tie to a past that seemed completely gone.
This sets up the spine of the narrative although flashbacks and interior memories of Malories’ time before the arrival of the creatures causing madness flesh things out a bit. The train that the census take spoke of turns out to be authentic. In fact, the census taker turns out to have been trustworthy on all counts, including placing Malorie’s parents on the survival list. In desperate hope a possible future reunion, they had put faith in their daughter’s personality and taken up residence at a survival camp filled with the same type of politically progressive folk as Malorie. Of course, they couldn’t know that their liberal-minded daughter has undergone quite a swing to the right in the years since.
One name not on the list is another survivor. It is the name that Malorie had expected to hear but will not turn out to be quite the good news that that is learning of her parents’ survival. Gary, the seemingly crazed guy who had thrown their home open to the creatures and nearly caused the death of Malorie, returns into her life though, truthfully, he never actually left. He has been basically stalking the trio ever since they left the city. He also possesses a strange form of immunity to the insanity that is caused by looking at the creatures.
It is this ability of the creatures to cause people to go mad that becomes the focus of Tom’s sense of rebellion. Like any teenager, he wants to get out from the thumb of an overprotective parent. Unlike Malorie who has given up all hope ever returning to a world that one can actually look at as they please, Tom aches for the simple pleasure of merely living without a blindfold. A centerpiece of the escape narrative is conflict that is produced between Malorie and Tom over stories of people trying to come up with ways to live among the creatures without madness. To do this require being able to look at them and though there are legends of people who have discovered ways to do this, the evidence points to the opposite. The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who looked and failed to survive. Tom is committed to his dream, however, and ultimately invents glasses that use a two-way mirror concept that proves—through a particularly risky trial and error experimentation—to actually work. Of course, there is still the lingering mystery of how this will help since the creatures can no cause madness by touching someone.
Except that this great fear which has been ruling Malorie’s life and parenting for the past ten years turns out to have been misplaced. Olympia has been holding onto a secret. Actually, she’s been holding onto two secrets. One is that Annette had never been blind. She had for some reason been faking being blind the whole time. Olympia’s other secret is even bigger. She’s never needed the blindfolds. She’s never had to rely on her hearing. She possesses the gift that Tom wants than anything in the world. She is immune and can look without caution.
Such is Tom’s passion to belong to a world that is not just one “no!” after another and in which blindfolds can be tosses away forever, that he becomes an easy target for Gary to entice. Tom falls under the spell of Gary’s misogynist propaganda and succeeds in create distance between the boy and Malorie. The one obstacle out of his way, he is able to easily get her where he wants: a Safer Room. Which is basically just a twelve-by-eight bunker occupying a hole in the ground. The purpose was to create a place safe for continuing to exist should the creatures completely take over. But in essence is just a crypt. And Gary succeeds in hiding Malorie inside one of them.
Malorie, who has spent almost every second of her life since the apocalypse protecting her two kids and doing everything possible to keep them safe now must depend upon Olympia and Tom to save and help fulfill the dream of reuniting with her parents. Olympia must reconsider the wisdom of keeping secrets in order to rescue her mother. And though she herself isn’t yet ready to trust looking at the world the world again, she trusts Tom’s inventive mind enough to see through his eyes as they peer through his glasses alongside Olympia’s pure immune vision. Working together, both kids guide the unseeing Malorie to train the aim of the crossbow she is holding. Olympia physically adjusts the angle of the bow until they are sure its path will be straight and true. The arrow enters the body of the man sleeping outside what used to be a liquor store and in an instant Gary becomes one less threat Malorie has to protect against.
It is a bittersweet victory, however. While Gary is left behind as a body with an arrow sticking out of it, Malorie’s reunion with her parents is half-fulfilled. The crossbow belonged to her father who teaches her how to use it. Her mother had already died before she was able to get there.
